


Tribble in Paradise

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, Gen, Time Travel, Tribbles (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-14
Updated: 2011-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:24:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake Sisko finds himself stranded at Starfleet Academy during his father's time, on an unlikely mission to keep an outbreak of tribble breeding under control. Kathryn Janeway stumbles across him by accident and decides to help him, under the guise of completing a project for her exobiology class run by the brilliant and beautiful Lieutenant Beverly Howard. Meanwhile, she tries to prevent her lab partner, Benjamin Sisko, from discovering the existence of his future son, and struggles with an attraction to her instructor she doesn't realize is returned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tribble in Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Classic Trek Big Bang](http://classictrekbb.livejournal.com/) 2011.

The final of Starfleet Academy’s inter-departmental Parrises Squares tournament is scheduled for 1400 hours tomorrow, and it’s the only thing anyone can talk about. Kathryn is tired of it – tired of the non-stop discussion of odds and injuries and unexpected changes in line-up, tired of people she has never exchanged a word with asking her who she’s supporting and what time she’s going to get there when she has no intention of setting foot in the stadium. Her interest in Parrises Squares has only ever extended to its representation of the extracurricular life her parents tried to prevent her from living when she was a stubborn child, and nothing is different now that she is just as stubborn an adult - she will remain outside the madness with the same dedication. Even if she turns out to be the only one in her class who doesn't make an appearance, she doesn't much care. She has a plan to stake out the desk in her room with a cup of coffee, a stack of quantum mechanics manuals, and revel in the rare but precious quiet.

It’s her idea of a perfect night, and it’s all going to plan: her last class for the day is over – exobiology, occasionally dry but necessary, and Kathryn has a fondness for the pretty young instructor she can't deny – and she is making her way out the door to escape the descent of the crowds, when she feels a tap on her shoulder and turns around. She finds herself staring directly into someone’s uniform collar, so she looks up to meet the warm, smiling eyes of one of her classmates. Somebody Sisko – Benjamin, maybe? She doesn’t pay a lot of attention, but it doesn't usually present much of a problem; people don’t usually talk to her unless they’re assigned to do partner work together, or she's standing in the way of a diagram.

She smiles up at probably-Benjamin, a little forced. “Can I help you?”

“Yes!” he exclaims, and grins at her. It’s a nice grin, almost blinding in its brightness and intensity, but it’s also infectious, and she feels the corner of her own mouth tug up in response. “Kathryn, isn’t it? I'm Benjamin. Sisko. I was wondering if you’d organised a partner for the upcoming project.”

Kathryn tilts her head to the side. “The project that’s due at the end of next month?”

Benjamin nods. “That’s the one.”

“No,” Kathryn says, “I haven’t.” She hasn’t because that project is due at the end of next month, and Lieutenant Howard hasn’t even mentioned it in class yet. Benjamin must know about it because he’s read the syllabus outline in advance, just as she has, and noted it down. That scores points in his favour. “Frankly, I'm surprised to hear you – or anyone, for that matter – mention it so early. It isn’t due for a while yet.”

Benjamin shrugs easily. “I know, I just thought I’d get in and ask you early.”

Kathryn tries not to frown. “If you don’t mind my asking – why me?”

Benjamin has always projected an impression of confident intelligence, but he’s usually the one laughing the loudest in the room before Lieutenant Howard comes in to quiet them down. Now that she thinks about it, though, he is often also one to answer questions and raise good points, and he’s respectful of authority without being obsequious.

As if he can guess at what she’s thinking, he grins again and laughs, loud and quick. “This class is important to me, and I know you’re a hardworking student. I thought we might make a good team.”  
His manner is casual but his words and his eyes are sincere, and Kathryn finds herself smiling at him honestly this time. “Well,” she says, “since you asked so early on and since my usual partner is taking a different course, I say why not?”

“Great!” He claps his hands together, enthusiasm almost out of place in the mild room, and Kathryn is about to excuse herself when a voice behind her says playfully, “An interesting proposition, Mr Sisko. I’ll be fascinated to see where this partnership leads.”

It’s Lieutenant Howard, stack of PADDs in her arms and teasing grin on her face, caught up to them just before the hallway. Kathryn had forgotten that her instructor was still in the room in her rush to get out, but the unexpected conversation with Benjamin has thrown her off guard and boxed her in to a small space beside the door.

Kathryn opens her mouth to speak but realizes her mouth is dry, because – has Lieutenant Howard’s hair changed color since the last time they met? The woman is watching her, amusement dancing back and forth in her clear blue eyes, and Kathryn swallows down the urge to ask her just that.

“Well, Cadet,” Lieutenant Howard says, “if you’ll let me through, I’d better make my way over to the match. Wouldn't want to miss it.”

Kathryn, cheeks flaming, steps aside to let her through, and has to stop herself visibly flinching when Lieutenant Howard’s long hair brushes her hand along the way. She closes her eyes for a moment to get her bearings, and when she looks up again Benjamin is watching her with a glint in his sharp dark eye.

“Something wrong?” she snaps, because she already feels humiliated enough; she doesn’t need her new science partner to be aware of exactly why.

Benjamin spreads his hands, the picture of unconvincing, calculated innocence. “I didn’t say a word.”

“You didn’t have to,” Kathryn grumbles, but she’s fighting a smile when she does. Benjamin gestures for her to precede him out the door, and they fall into step together once they have reached the bustling corridor. Benjamin chatters away to her about his ideas for their project, throws in a sly teasing comment about doing their best to impress Lieutenant Howard, then flashes a grin and disappears into the turbolift before she can give voice to her indignation.

And that is how she meets and makes friends with Benjamin Lafayette Sisko.

*

Later that evening, shut up in her room with the promised burst of peace and caffeine, Kathryn is sunk deep into astrophysical algorithms but still occasionally pondering the unexpected meeting. She tries to tell herself that her preoccupation with Benjamin Sisko is merely the result of meeting somebody she not only can find it in herself to get along with but actually like, but Kathryn has never really mastered the skill of self-deception, and she finds that she knows inside that it’s something else. It isn’t that she’s attracted to him – though he’s certainly her type, witty and clever, ambitious and handsome; it’s more the fact that he saw right through her reaction to Lieutenant Howard that has her worried.

How did he know? Is she that transparent? She tries to console herself with the theory that Benjamin is merely perhaps a very observant sort of man, or that maybe he is attracted to Lieutenant Howard himself and was projecting his own interest onto her – that might be it. Or maybe—

She is startled out of her ponderings by the chime at her door, and she glances at the clock – 1837; who could possibly be out there at this hour when the Parrises Squares match is due to start in only twenty minutes? – then sits up straighter in her chair and calls out, “Come in.”

“Katie? What are you doing in here?”

A curly blond head pokes around the corner of the doorway and Kathryn breathes a sigh of relief: it’s just her roommate, Cadet Shelby, come to check up on her as she is wont to do. “Hi, Elizabeth,” Kathryn says. “I was just studying. Aren’t you going to the game?”

Elizabeth glances at the collection of PADDs strewn across her table and raises an eyebrow. “I’m on my way there now. You’re not coming?”

Kathryn hurries to pluck an acceptable excuse from the recesses of her mind, but finds she lands on nothing but the truth. “I don’t really follow the game. I’d honestly rather stay here and get some more work done.” She pauses, feeling almost apologetic. “You don’t mind?”

Elizabeth shakes her head. “I know how important peace and quiet is to you, Katie. Just thought I’d drop by and give you the chance to get out if you wanted.”

Kathryn smiles, the corner of her mouth hitching up. “Thanks, Beth. I appreciate the thought.”

“Any time. See you later?”

“I should still be up,” Kathryn says, gesturing widely at the files surrounding her. “Enjoy the game.”

“I will!” Elizabeth calls from where she is already backing around the corner.

The door slides shut, and Kathryn sighs on the vague wave of guilt at her lack of desire to socialize, but turns back to her reading, determined not to let it get to her, determined to make the most of the time she has to be productive. She shakes herself out and resettles. Then does it again.

Maybe she needs to change her clothes.

Maybe she needs more coffee?

It takes five minutes of futile efforts at concentration before she tosses the PADD down onto her desk and rolls her shoulders, wincing at the crick in her neck. Her chronometer tells her there are still a couple minutes before the game starts, and abruptly, decision made, she stands up. She isn’t getting anything done here anyway – maybe, if she walks quickly, she’ll be able to catch up to Beth before they lose each other forever in the crowd. She checks that her belongings are in order and then starts out down the deserted hallway of the second-year cadets’ quarters, peering absently around as she goes. It isn’t often that she is the only person around; sometimes she takes herself off to the Academy library to study and returns late at night or early into the morning, but she usually prefers the quiet and familiarity of her own room, where Elizabeth is studious and considerate, never bothered by the light, and there are fewer variables for her to contend with. The corridor leading down to the transport hub and out further to the Academy's sporting facilities is so devoid of life at the moment, however, that Kathryn almost wonders if something is out of the ordinary - surely she can’t be the only person remaining in the accommodation wing? There are several Vulcan cadets spread across her classes, and she can’t imagine that every one of them would find a densely packed stadium full of emotionally invested humans a terribly logical place to spend their unscheduled time.

She is just turning the corner past a first-year astrophysics lab when movement out of the corner of her eye catches her attention and she pauses, doubles back to glance around her. She peers in through the transparent door of the lab and finds nothing, but thinks she hears something, some indistinct sound, emanating from a nearby – is that a storage bay? She can’t be sure; there are a lot of places on campus she’s never been, but she's not about to let it go without a quick investigation. Casting a look around, she edges closer to the door and presses her ear almost flush against the cool duranium, and sure enough, there is definitely someone moving around inside it.

Kathryn narrows her eyes and takes a moment to consider the facts. She is a lone science cadet with limited training in either interrogation or hand-to-hand combat. There may be nothing more sinister to this than one of Starfleet’s specialty cleaning units going about its work, but there may be something else to it, too: after all, Kathryn rationalizes, even though she has no idea what ‘this’ is, it is somewhat suspicious for it to be taking place during a major sporting tournament that has the near-entire population of the Academy, as of this floor, distracted and congregated in an area two miles away. She wonders what her next move ought to be, and then decides to go for bold – she has, after all, a communicator ready to contact Beth, Benjamin or even (and she gulps at the thought) Lieutenant Howard if she needs to – so she knocks.

There is no answer, but the shuffling inside the room ceases, as though the person responsible has stopped what they’re doing to answer. After a moment, she knocks again, and this time she hears what sounds like an intake of breath, a rustling movement, a bumping sound, and then a muffled voice calls for the voice command to activate the door. The sight that greets her is nothing like what she expected – the room is indeed what appears to be a supply closet, but instead of holding desks or computer consoles or even lab equipment for the classroom next door, it contains only a great doubled-door cabinet and a small glass chamber, encased in which is a little furry ball. Kathryn frowns.

The person responsible for the chamber, as for opening the door, is a tall, dark, lanky boy who looks to be about sixteen, and who strikes her as somehow strangely familiar. He is not wearing standard Starfleet-issue clothes, so it is unlikely that he’s a cadet, but neither is he wearing clothing Kathryn recognizes as anything adhering to the latest fashion (that is, that she’s aware of; Kathryn will be the first to admit that her apparel is the least of her concerns). The boy has turned wide, alarmed eyes on her, frozen, and Kathryn realizes then that she is probably not presenting the most welcome of intrusions. She puts a hand up in what she hopes is a calming gesture and tries out a smile.

“Hello,” she says. “Are you all right?”

The boy blinks at her a moment and then nods vigorously. “Yes. Yes, I am, I just – uh, I’m trying to keep my t—my fluffball contained. Sometimes it gets out and I can’t find it for days! Ha ha.” His laugh is as poor as his acting, and Kathryn raises an eyebrow.

“Well,” she says. She considers and rejects about twenty-five follow-up questions to that one in the next three and a half seconds, and instead takes a step further into the room and says, “What’s your name?”

“Ah,” he says, and appears to ponder the question for a moment, “I suppose I can tell you that. My name is Jake.”

“Jake,” Kathryn repeats. “I’m Kathryn, and I heard you moving around when I was walking by and thought I’d take a look at what was going on.”

Jake winces. “Yeah, I didn’t think anyone would be around to hear me. Sorry. I thought all the cadets on this floor would be at the Parrises Squares tournament.”

Kathryn shrugs. “I’m not much of a fan.” She peers at him, takes in once again just how young and out of place he seems to be. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re doing here alone in a closet?” She gestures at the glass case behind him. “And what is that, exactly?”

Jake’s face twists in an expression that Kathryn can’t mistake for anything but anxiety.

“Is something the matter?”

“Yes,” Jake says, “I – I don’t know how much I can tell you. I don’t know if I should be telling you anything. Who are you?”

Kathryn ignores the worrisome tinge of the words and focuses on the question she can answer immediately. “Kathryn Janeway, I'm a second-year cadet. I live on this floor. I don’t know what’s going on, but if there’s a problem, or you’re not meant to be here, or you’re in some sort of danger, I can help you. I can get a student adviser now to come here and—”

“No!” Jake cries, startling her with the force and vehemence of his response. “Sorry, but – no, you can’t do that. No one else can know I’m here. I’m not – I’m not supposed to be here, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s – _argh_!” Jake lets out a growl of frustration and scratches his head. “Sorry,” he says again. “I don’t mean to alarm you. There’s just – a lot going on and I don’t know who I can talk to about it just yet. Right now I have a mission and I need to fulfil it.”

Kathryn narrows her eyebrows. “You aren’t a member of Starfleet.” It isn’t so much a question as a statement; he is too young. It isn't possible. “Where did you come from? Why are you here?”

“I’m not a member of Starfleet, but I know a lot of people who are and I know you can help me, but I can’t tell anyone else why I’m here or even that I’m here until I get my mission under control.”

Kathryn walks closer to him, nodding, and asks, “And what is your mission?”

Jake looks down at the fluffy thing twitching inside the glass case. “To neutralize this before it takes over.”

“Before it takes over ... what?” she asks, disbeliving. “Forgive me for this, but – can’t you just throw it out? Recycle it?”

“No,” Jake says, “you don’t understand. It’s a life-form. I need to neutralise it but I am under – I can’t kill it.”

She peers down at it. It looks like one of the replicated powder-puffs her mother used to show her and her sister as examples of how people in the olden times applied their make-up, or maybe like a chew-toy her dog might like. “All right,” she says. “So what’s the problem? Isn’t it contained quite well in here?”

Jake grimaces. “It is at the moment, but this life-form has a tendency to ... replicate itself, often at vast speeds. And once it starts it doesn’t really stop.”

“I still don’t understand why you don’t just take it to a science lab on campus and have them keep it in a bio-containment field. That’s what they’re—”

“No,” Jake says, “no, that doesn’t work. They tried that before and it didn't work. It's best not to move it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve already said too much, I just – oh no. Oh no.” Jake interrupts himself and his voice suddenly fills with dread, and Kathryn looks at him in confusion before she follows his gaze to the glass case and watches, fascinated, as the fluff-ball copies itself right before her eyes. Now there are two, equal colour and shape and size, harmless-looking enough, but the speed with which it copied itself is indeed remarkable. Kathryn has never seen a biological organism of this size reproduce itself so quickly. She’d love the opportunity to study it, if only—

“This is a problem,” Jake says gravely, looking right at her. “It’s started. This closet is usually empty and isn’t connected to any major system, so I’m going to keep it here and try to set up a temporary force-field around it while I figure out what to do next.” He pulls a tricorder out of the back pocket of his pants, but it is unlike any tricorder Kathryn has ever seen before – sleeker, smaller, lighter-looking but with more buttons, and Kathryn is beginning to get an inkling of what’s going on here. She keeps her mouth shut, however, while Jake taps away and generates (after a couple of false starts) a level-six security field around the case. He snaps the tricorder closed and grins back at her. “There, that should do it. I’m not much of an engineer, but my friend Nog taught me how to fiddle around with the Starfleet equipment to get a—” he stops mid-sentence, suddenly, and shakes it off. “Anyway. I need to get out of here and go back to my – I need to go somewhere to figure out what to do next.”

Jake gestures for Kathryn to leave before he follows her out, seals the door closed with a combination of tricorder motions Kathryn finds herself desperate to ask him about, and they stand outside in the still-empty corridor facing each other. “Sorry again,” he says, gesturing awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to get you involved in any of this.”

Kathryn quirks an eyebrow at him and murmurs, “I still don’t know what ‘this’ is, but never mind that now. The important thing is that I do know, and you are obviously setting out to complete a task of some importance.” Jake nods. “And I know that for whatever reason you can’t tell anyone that you’re here, or what you’re doing, but I want you to know that I can if I need to. I can alert Starfleet to the presence of that thing in the closet without ever telling them where it came from or who brought it there. I can also talk to you or do my best to help you if you need it. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Jake says. He smiles, lopsided and bright, and says, “Thanks, Cadet Janeway. I appreciate it.”

“Please, call me Kathryn,” she says, with a dismissive wave. It feels strange to hear the rank come out of the mouth of a teenager; he isn’t, after all, so many years younger than herself. She beckons for his tricorder and taps a few keys into the memory – it is an unfamiliar design, but she’s always been a fast learner and picks up the basics after she scans the screen a few times – before she passes it back to him. “If you don’t have a communication device to reach me, this is the code to my personal message console. I have access to that at all times, so if you need anything – help or advice or anything – please contact me there. I’m already involved in this, so you don’t need to be risking yourself unnecessarily if I can prevent it. All right?”

Jake nods, looking, to her relief, a great deal more relaxed than he had a moment ago. She still wants answers – is burning for them, in fact – but she knows she’ll have to be patient, and in the meantime she has a few ideas on how to increase her own intelligence on the matter. But Jake doesn’t need to know that.

She smiles at him and extends her hand, which he takes with a firmness of grip that both surprises and mildly impresses her. He is just turning to leave, having thanked her for her discretion once again, when Kathryn calls out: “Just out of interest, Jake, what’s your last name?”

Jake spins and grins and says, “Sisko. But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

She can’t fight the grin that emerges on her own face at that because: she knew it. She just knew it. “Don’t worry,” she says. “My lips are sealed.”

*

The next morning, Kathryn wakes up almost convinced that she dreamed or imagined or hallucinated the entire thing. A ball of fluff inside a case that must be stopped from replicating but not by death? A boy with futuristic technology who looks exactly like her exobiology lab partner? She shakes her head against the memories and sits up to cast a look around the room – Shelby is back, sound asleep in her bed, and must have gotten in after Kathryn went to sleep because she doesn’t remember seeing her or hearing her come in. The stack of PADDs beside her bed is where it always is, familiar – except, _except_ , she realizes then (with a sense of dread that is also relief that her subconscious isn’t betraying her to insanity), that there is one on top of the stack that wasn’t there before. She reaches over and picks up it, tentative, but she already thinks she knows what it is and her suspicions only confirm it: a list, just a list, but the list says:

\- Jake  
\- Storage Supply Room 26 Alpha  
\- Furball – Kirk?

She frowns at the last one – she must mean James T. Kirk, the former captain of the _Enterprise_ , but right now she can't remember why. Well, she supposes, as she sets aside the PADD and moves quietly out of bed to get dressed, she’s written it down for a reason and she intends to find out.

*

A week passes and she hears from Jake only once; he sends her a message to check in, let her know he’s camping out in his shuttlecraft (she doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing with one in the first place but doesn’t ask; she’s come to learn that most of the time she isn’t allowed to ask and he isn’t allowed to answer anyway) and he’s okay. Once he asks if she has a spare hyperspanner that he can borrow – she doesn’t, she does take classes in engineering as part of her program but doesn’t have her own tools – so she replicates one with the last of her monthly rations for supplies; they’re going to be replenished soon enough anyhow. He thanks her profusely, tells her she doesn’t know just how useful she’s been, that he’ll be in touch if he needs to. It’s a strange sort of a relationship they’ve built: she finds that she trusts him, whether or not because he looks exactly like the man she is more and more convinced must be his father (she had suspected at first that he was a younger version of Benjamin himself, but on closer consideration his mannerisms seemed too different, he was less brashly confident, slightly taller, less broadly built). Whatever the case, she knows he trusts her, and while she finds herself desperate for answers - she is constantly tempted to corner Jake and demand an explanation for why he’s here, or at least for why he shouldn’t be in the first place - she finds that the knowledge she does possess is almost enough to tide her over.

For in the time since they first met, she has conducted a little research of her own to discover the name and origin of the fluff-ball creature Jake has been hiding, and she has a plan to find out even more.

Exobiology is her last class of the day, and it follows a particularly gruelling seminar in Applied Warp Theory that would ordinarily have worked nicely to distract Kathryn from her usual reservations with this class. Today, however, she is so preoccupied with Jake and the events of the last few days, not to mention how she’s going to pitch to Benjamin with any kind of success that they choose this as their topic of study, that she isn’t even looking straight ahead when she rounds a corner near the classroom and runs smack bang into her Usual Distraction Number 1: none other than Lieutenant Beverly Howard. She’s wearing her hair loose, today; it falls all the way down her back, light and bright, and Kathryn follows it with her eyes before she swallows down an inappropriate response.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” she says, and she meets Lieutenant Howard’s eyes with difficulty, reminding herself that it isn’t her fault that Kathryn is both completely intimidated by and attracted to her, and that however awkward she feels, it wouldn’t do to channel that awkwardness into rudeness or disrespect; this is her teacher, after all. (And Kathryn really must continue to remind herself of that. Daily, if possible.) “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“No, you weren’t,” she replies, but there is a lightness, a mischief laced in her tone that makes Kathryn relax slightly more. She hazards a smile, and Lieutenant Howard grins back. “You’re in an awful hurry, in fact. Are you that excited to get to my class?”

“Absolutely,” Kathryn deadpans, and Beverly laughs, the sound ringing, and Kathryn feels her ears start to tingle. What is wrong with her? “Actually Ben – Cadet Sisko - and I are hoping to start work on our project in the next few days. I have a topic in mind I’m hoping he’ll agree to.” Kathryn cannot even recognize herself in these words: they are the truth, and she is speaking them, but it’s as though an easy, confident stranger has temporarily taken over and is uttering them on her behalf, because this is the most she’s ever said to Beverly Howard since the moment the woman walked into her exobiology classroom and dazzled Kathryn with the combined force of her understanding of Vulcan neuroscience and her sense of humor. And maybe her smile.

She shakes her head against the tangent when she realizes Lieutenant Howard is responding. She is saying, “...that he will listen to you, Cadet – he’s a gifted student, if occasionally lacking in focus, and I know that he requested to be your partner for a reason.”

Kathryn looks up at this, surprised that Beverly – Lieutenant Howard, dammit; Kathryn is careful to always think of her in her professional capacity only, or she’d be opening a whole other can of worms right there – should have been aware of Benjamin’s plans. “If you don’t mind my asking, Lieutenant, did he tell you he was planning to ask me before he did?”

They've reached the door to the classroom, and Lieutenant Howard shakes her head and quirks a lip up at Kathryn. “No, but he did tell me he was serious about this project, and that if he could he wanted to team up with the best student in the class. I told him that was you.” She turns and walks into the classroom, then, Kathryn following with what she is certain must present an absurd, dumbfounded expression on her face and a spread of warmth she’s never felt before over her chest. And she can’t help thinking that Beverly’s eyes, Beverly’s hair; Beverly’s smile has never looked so radiant.

*

Benjamin, to her surprise, is completely receptive to the idea of studying the tribbles. When she calls up an image of one on her PADD from the Academy database, he laughs out loud in delight and says, “Sure, why not?”

So that’s settled. She is trying to hatch a plan to get her hands on one for study when Benjamin asks her if she thinks it would be possible. He is rolling a white spherical object between his hands, playing it over his fingers, and Kathryn thinks she’s seen it somewhere before, that it must be some game or other she’s stumbled on in the past. She’ll ask him about it later – knowing Benjamin, he’ll get so caught up in it that the topic might take them off-track for quite a while – but for now he just says, “Do you think there’s any chance we could find one to study? I know we can’t exactly fly off to Iota Geminorum IV to find a sample of the specimen ... unless you have a full pilot’s license you’re not telling me about.” He turns the full force of his grin on her, and Kathryn finds she’s unable to stop herself from smiling wryly in return.

“No pilot’s license, unfortunately, but I do have an idea. I might just need some time to execute it.”

Benjamin cocks an eyebrow, intrigued, but lets it drop. “Okay,” he says, “I’ll leave that to you – plenty of theoretical research we can do in the meantime. And we’ll look up that case study from the _Enterprise_ when Kirk had to deal with that infestation, and—”

Kathryn glances around the room as he’s talking, listening with one ear, but turns quickly back to face him, cheeks flushed, when her eyes stray to Beverly – and she finds that Beverly’s looking right back at her.

***

Beverly Howard finishes her final class for the day, the second-year exobiology group containing some of the most innovative and lively characters she’s ever met, and packs up her stack of PADDs with a smile. It’s the last day of class before the weekend, and she has plans to meet up with one of her good friends for drinks at the Academy Lounge later this evening. She slips out of the room before the majority of the students have stood up from their desks, smiling at a girl who bids her goodbye, and heads down the hallway towards the turbolift shaft that will lead her to the medical department. She passes one of her supervisors along the way, nods her greeting, and then pauses outside the office five doors over and one floor down from her own, knocking lightly on the near-transparent wall.

“Are we still all right to meet later?” she asks by way of greeting, and the woman behind the desk looks up from her computer console to smile.

“Beverly, hi! Yes, of course we are – how does 1800 sound? I’ll meet you by the bar?”

“Perfect,” Beverly says. “See you there.”

“Don’t bring any work with you!” Deanna calls out after her, and Beverly laughs as she makes her way back to her own office.

Deanna is always late, even when she’s trying not to be, so despite her playful orders Beverly does take something with her to read while she waits. She rationalizes it by the fact that it isn’t exactly work, and she outranks Deanna anyway (they technically have the same rank, both full Lieutenants, but Beverly’s position as a doctor gives her the edge). Beverly isn’t so ingrained into her office that she would bring a PADD of alien physiology to drinks with her friend, but she would – and does and did – bring the transcript of a secret special project she’s been working on for the last several weeks. She arrives early at the lounge with the intention of looking over it, maybe making a few notes as they come to her, then tucking it safely away before Deanna can join her, but there is a substantial number of people spilling in from the Academy grounds and she winds up so engrossed in her reading that she doesn’t notice Deanna’s presence until she’s beside her, hand warm on her shoulder and laughter pealing through the thrum of conversation.

“I don’t believe it; you actually _did_ bring work with you.” Deanna takes the seat next to Beverly, crosses her legs and turns to face her with a comically disbelieving look. “Beverly. Honestly. I think we need to have a talk about what you do in your off-time.”

Deanna signals to the bartender and orders a Betazoid drink Beverly doesn’t catch the name of; Beverly just gets a glass of wine. She wants simple today. She makes a point of looking up at Deanna and poking her tongue out, though. “Very funny, Counselor,” she says, and Deanna smiles into her drink. “But in my own defence, it isn’t work. It’s an independent extracurricular project,” she tells her primly, and Deanna grins.

“Would you care to share the details?”

Beverly opens her mouth to refuse, but then stops herself before she does, reconsidering. Deanna is probably her best friend, is aware of Beverly’s creative interests, and knows her well enough to offer an honest opinion without either being too harsh or trying unnecessarily to spare her feelings. Plus Beverly has had this secret up her sleeve for nearly two months, her eyes the only ones to see it, and maybe she could do with the input of a clever, emotionally available friend who is trained in psychology. She changes her mind. “You know, I think I will. Now, you have to promise not to laugh at me,” she says solemnly, and Deanna raises an eyebrow and nods.

“I promise.”

Beverly takes the PADD out of where she replaced it in her bag and glances down at it before she says, quietly, so as not to be overheard, “It’s a script. You know I’ve always been interested in theater, and I’ve missed performing since I came to the Academy, so I decided to ... try my hand at writing something myself.”

Deanna accepts it gently when Beverly passes it over, and spends a moment looking down at it with a respect that makes Beverly instantly relieved that she thought to trust her. She could do with a second opinion, and Deanna’s is the one she wants - when she looks up at her again, she’s smiling. “Much as I want to read this right now, I don’t think I’d be doing it justice if I did. We came here to talk, so if you have a copy, how about I take this with me and look over it when I’m in my quarters? I can give it back to you tomorrow morning, or as soon as I’m finished, if you—”

Beverly nods, touches a hand to her arm to interrupt her, but she’s smiling. “That sounds great. I do have a copy back in my quarters, but I think I could probably use a break from it for a day. I’m getting a bit of writer’s block.”

“Excellent timing, then,” Deanna says matter-of-factly. “I hope I’ll be able to help.” She takes a sip of her drink, and then asks, “What are you planning to do with it once you’ve finished? Get it published?”

“I—” Beverly starts, and then reasons that if she’s told her this much, she may as well continue. “If I can, of course, I'm hoping to get it _performed_. Part of why I wrote it was that I missed being involved in theater productions, so I thought maybe, if I had some new material to work with, I could try to get together some interest and put on a production with the help of the students. Assuming any of them would want to be in it,” she laughs.

Deanna nods, eyes bright with the thought. “Beverly, that’s a brilliant idea. Really, I have no doubt there would be several students who’d want to take part in that form of a creative outlet. There are plenty of sporting groups around campus, and a few musical ensembles, but the Academy is missing a drama club. You could hold auditions, organize some members; you’d have no trouble finding a space to rehearse, and then you could—”

“All right, I’m glad you support it!” Beverly laughs, and though she’s brushing it off outwardly she’s really delighted. She hadn’t considered performance a serious possibility until Deanna highlighted the points she just did, and Beverly can already think of a handful of students whose personalities might work well on the stage, some others who might benefit from a bit of socialization outside their areas of interests, some she might just ask because she likes them and wants them around—

She finds herself blushing, suddenly, violently, both ashamed and interested by the way the thought invaded her mind with such unexpected force – there is a particular student in mind, of course, and that is what makes it more poignant. It isn’t a thought she can pretend she hasn’t had before, either. All this takes place in a matter of seconds, but even as she reaches a point of acceptance, determined that despite the issues inherent in such a process she will have to move on for now and just prepare to examine it later, she has forgotten to consider one element in the equation: Deanna, and her empathic abilities.

Deanna is watching her, so aware of the sharp shifts in emotion going on in Beverly’s mind that she has stopped, drink poised mid-way to her mouth, to keep her gaze fixed. She may not be able to read Beverly’s mind, but her powers of deduction have never been wanting and she traces the patterns of thought to a logical conclusion, proven when she says, softly, “Who is it?”

Beverly would protest, but she knows that there’s no point; not with Deanna, but maybe she wouldn’t even protest to someone who couldn’t read her feelings with any certainty. She takes a sip of wine, takes a breath, and then tells her, “A student.” Deanna’s eyes have barely had time to widen before Beverly is lifting a hand and saying, “I know, I know. It’s unusual for me to be sucked in, particularly by someone years younger than I am, but there’s something very ... intriguing about this girl.”

Deanna searches her eyes for a long moment and then says softly: “But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re attracted to her.” Not a question.

“I’ve tried not to be,” Beverly sighs. “I behave as professionally towards her as I do to my other students – at least, I hope I do – but I think I’ve come to the point where I can no longer ignore it. I don’t suppose there’s much use in trying, really, is there?”

Deanna shakes her head no. “In fact, I think that accepting it will help you to deal with it better. Awareness is a necessary part of acceptance, and if you’re aware of how you’re feeling and acting, you should be in a better position to control it.”

Beverly nods; for the first time since this realization became more than a passing thought that Cadet Janeway’s intense focus was a thing to be admired, she feels better about it all, somehow more ... free. She hazards a look up at Deanna, fiddling with her wine glass on the counter in front of her. “So you don’t think it’s a terrible thing that I’m feeling this? You don’t think I need to feel – ashamed?”

Deanna shakes her head again, and lays a palm over Beverly’s forearm, leans closer to her. “Not at all. Attraction comes in all shapes and sizes; sometimes it’s professionally appropriate and sometimes it isn’t. This cadet—”

“Kathryn,” Beverly murmurs. “Kathryn Janeway.”

Deanna squeezes her arm. “Kathryn Janeway. Which of your classes is she in?”

“Second year exobiology. She’s an excellent student; top of the class.”

“I wouldn’t have expected anyone less to attract your attention,” Deanna teases, and Beverly can’t help cracking a smile.

“I know she’s on a science track, but I don’t know where her other interests lie. If you’re asking whether or not I’m likely to meet her again in the next two years of her study, the answer is most likely yes. Particularly if she pursues exobiology, which I will be recommending that she do given her natural aptitude for the subject.”

Deanna is silent for a moment, then she asks, “Does she like you?”

“How do you mean?”

She seems to stifle the urge to make another teasing comment, for which Beverly is mildly grateful. “I mean in any way – does she like you as an instructor? Do you get a sense of anything more?”

Beverly eyes her. “Are you trying to figure out if my interest in her is a response to her interest in me?”

“Nothing so ... straightforward,” Deanna admits, “though there is some truth to the notion that mutual attraction can develop when it’s noticed.”

“That does make sense,” Beverly nods, “but I don’t suspect that it’s the case here. Kathryn – yes, I think she likes me, but I think she likes me because I’m her exobiology instructor and I know a lot about a subject she’s interested in. If there’s any response to me it’s one of ... admiration, I suppose; a desire to emulate at the most. She’s shy around me, but she seems to be shy around everyone.” She thinks about it a moment and then says with more conviction, “No. No, that’s all it is.”

“Well,” Deanna says, “I suppose that makes things easier on you – in a professional situation I’m sure it will be easier to deal with if it isn’t mutual.” She lifts her glass to Beverly’s. “To unreciprocated attraction and original plays.”

Beverly laughs and clinks their glasses. “I’ll drink to that.”

***

The talk with Deanna has made Beverly feel a lot better about everything, but it is still a strange sensation to have the truth of what she’s feeling be so exposed. Even though it’s only Deanna, who would have sensed it anyway, there is a weighted kind of finality to the fact that she has spoken the words aloud, has given the name of this distracting young woman the ring of truth of speech. Ultimately, though, she thinks that Deanna is right: Beverly has never been especially perverse, but she can’t help acknowledging that there is a certain appeal in the rush, the implicit danger of wanting something (someone) forbidden. Her last relationship wasn’t disastrous, but neither did it end on the best of terms, and she supposes she could be trying for something safe in this, something impossible, something that can be enjoyed and entertained from afar. It’s out in the open now, though - as much as she’d ever want it to be - and she can only hope that the reality of that fact will help her to get a grip and move past it, because she must. That is her only option.

The grounds are almost deserted today; it is the weekend, and the bulk of cadets have either transported off to the coast or their home towns, leaving only the ones who have used up all their transporter credits already or who are staying around to get their work done. Beverly nearly always stays, on weekends; once or twice she’s accompanied Deanna on visits to her human grandparents, or traveled out to meet friends from elsewhere, but she more often uses the unusual peace and quiet to get whatever work she needs to finished – grading papers, however profound technology can be, remains a largely subjective task – while she can. Deanna is spending the day today at a seminar on psychology in the event of deep space missions, and Beverly has a plan that involves a long subspace catch-up with her grandmother on Caldos, several cups of Tarkalian tea, and a quiet day alone in her office. She is just congratulating herself on how productive she’s going to be in spite of the conversation she had with Deanna when the turbolift doors open in front of her and she is greeted by none other than Cadet Janeway, accompanied by a tall, dark-skinned boy who is dressed in colorful civilian clothes. He looks young, certainly too young to be at Starfleet Academy, she’s sure, and she opens her mouth to smile – only to glance down to see that they are each carrying several stacks of PADDs, with the boy also shifting a heavy ancient-looking _hardcover book_ under one arm.

As if that sight alone wouldn’t be enough to elicit surprise – Beverly herself still loves the feel of a real book, but she is one of the few who do – both of them greet her with poorly-disguised expressions of shiftiness. The boy smiles too widely and starts obsessively tapping his fingers on the PADDs, and Kathryn avoids her eyes. Beverly narrows hers.

“Hello,” she enunciates slowly, deliberately. She steps onto the turbolift and looks over at them both, standing there, side-by-side. “Going up?”

“Yes,” the boy says, and the same time that Kathryn says, “Down.”

Beverly raises an eyebrow, and now Kathryn does turn to her, lips turning up in a smile that smooths the worry from her forehead. “We’re going down,” Kathryn says. “This is Jake – I’m going to the library to meet up with a friend and get some research done for the exobiology project, and he was just helping me carry some books. Weren’t you, Jake?”

Jake nods, splits a bright smile across his face and says, “Yeah, sure were! Kathryn’s been helping me with some, uh, school work problems. You know.”

Beverly nods, smiles, rides with them in silence for the next two floors until they reach the juncture that leads to the student library. Once it dings open, Jake strolls out and moves immediately to a railing overlooking the grounds, and farther beyond it, a view of the Bay – and Beverly takes the opportunity to catch Kathryn before she follows him.

“Cadet,” she says quietly, and Kathryn pauses mid-stride to face her. “That boy ... is there a reason that he strikes me as familiar?”

“Yes,” Kathryn says, “he’s Benjamin Sisko’s brother. He wants to join Starfleet, so I was just showing him around until we all meet up for lunch.” She flashes Beverly a smile that oughtn’t warm her the way that it does, and says, “Have a good weekend, Lieutenant.”

“You too, Cadet. Best of luck with the project.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll see you in class.” Kathryn smiles once more, turns on her heel, and marches away after Jake.

The story seems plausible enough, so why can’t Beverly shake the feeling that she’s missing something?

***

“Oh man,” Jake breathes, when the turbolift doors have closed behind them and they are walking along the raised walkway to the library. “That was close.”

Kathryn grimaces, glancing back out of precaution. “It certainly was. I think she bought the story, though – she’s my exobiology instructor,” Kathryn tells him, tossing him a lopsided grin, “so she knows that there’s really a project to do.”

“That’s lucky.” Jake grins back. “So you say we’ll be able to find what we need in the library? You sure it’s okay?”

“Oh, yes,” Kathryn says, waving a hand, “it won’t be a problem at all – the library is an area designed for independent study, so the computer consoles there are free-access. Given that we don’t know everything that’s going on, and we don’t know what will happen if we alert any more people to these events, I want to take as many precautions as possible. Ideally we could just access the Academy exobiology database from the terminal in my quarters, but my roommate will be there and she will notice right away that you’re not from Starfleet.”

Jake nods, keeping close by her elbow as they sift through a crowd of students tumbling out of a nearby hall. Kathryn would ordinarily be curious about what they’d been up to and why they’d been there, but there’s too much on her mind at the moment to bother. “I understand,” he murmurs, clear and piercing just into her ear, and not for the first time she finds herself burning to know where he came from, who he is, what he knows. Well, she knows who he is, at least intellectually - her _lab partner’s son_ – but she doesn’t know where he lives, why he’s here, why his eyes are sometimes dancing and sometimes haunted by sorrow of a kind that makes her want to reach out and hold him. He’s younger than her, not by much, but by enough that the difference in wisdom, in life experience, even though he is tall and gangly and he sometimes trips over his words, is something she notices. She wonders if she’ll ever learn about him from where he belongs.

When they’ve passed through the chattering horde, Jake continues in a low voice, “What did you tell her? Your professor, I mean – when she called you back?”

“I—” Kathryn stops, thinks of everything she’s learned about temporal mechanics – admittedly not much, since it isn’t covered specifically until the final year of Academy training – and stops herself. “I told her that you’re the younger brother of one of the boys in my class; fortunately you look a little alike.” She quirks a smile at him, wonders when she learned how to lie. (She thinks it might have been somewhere around the time she realized she had a desperate adoration of her beautiful and brilliant young exobiology instructor, but can’t be sure.)

Jake, to her relief, is nodding. “That’s a sensible story. I don’t see why she’d question it.” He thinks about it for a moment, then he nods again. “I doubt she will.”

“Mmm,” Kathryn says, and she thinks about Beverly’s piercing eyes, about the way she stopped her specifically to ask why she might have recognized Jake. “Let’s hope not. Come on,” she says. “We have lots of work to do.”

*

As predicted, the library is empty save for a handful of students, out of uniform, who all appear to be practicing simulations on the available consoles. Kathryn supposes they are all here for similar reasons to herself – well, similar in the sense that they have roommates who are home for the weekend, rather than similar in the sense that they are helping the (presumably, but unconfirmed) time-traveling unborn son of the lab partner they first properly met two weeks earlier, by accident, in a closet where he was trying to keep a tribble inside a glass case.

Well, she thinks. It makes about as much sense in her head as it did when it all first happened. Speaking of which, she realizes she hasn’t had a progress report from Jake yet today – she’d only just met up with him when they unexpectedly ran into Beverly (Lieutenant Howard, _Lieutenant_ , Kathryn tries to remind herself) and then made their way here. She glances around now to check that nobody can overhear them and then asks him in an undertone, “Did you check on the – specimen, before we met?”

Jake looks at her with bright eyes and says, “I think we need a codeword! Something that only we can understand! What about—”

“Jake,” she interrupts, gentle but amused despite herself, “no we don’t. Let’s just keep our voices down and refer to it as the specimen, all right?”

“Oh, all right,” Jake says; he is pouting, but she senses that it’s mostly a joke. “Seriously, though, I did check on it and luckily it’s still under control.”

“Good,” Kathryn nods. She pulls a PADD out from the stack in front of her and scrolls through it for a moment before she highlights a passage and passes it across the desk so that Jake can read it. “As far as I can tell, we should be able to keep it in hand as long as you keep feeding it only in small amounts. Enough to keep it alive – though I frankly cannot understand why it’s so important—”

“—and I still can’t tell you!” Jake hisses.

She waves him off. “I know, I know. Enough to keep it alive and healthy, but not enough that its immense capacity for reproduction is stimulated and we end up with a disaster on our hands.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jake says. “I’m starting to run out of the little bits of grains stuff it eats, though – would you be able to replicate some for me? Do you have rations?”

Kathryn nods. “That’s not a problem. I can use the exobiology lab to do it.” She nudges him with her elbow and grins. “I am doing a project on these damn creatures, aren’t I?”

He grins back. “You sure are. Great idea, by the way, for a cover story.”

“I rather thought so,” she says. “Not to mention that it gave me something to write about, since I think half the class has chosen to study either the _Pon Farr_ or something to do with Klingon blood rituals – I think Bev—Lieutenant Howard might find it a nice change to read about something cute and fluffy instead.”

“Ha!” Jake says, so loudly that two or three heads swivel in their direction.

Kathryn chastizes him with a _shh_ , but she’s smiling.

*

They stay in the library for a good four hours, gathering any and all information they can on everything from the origin of tribbles to how to where they can live to how to get rid of them (this is what Kathryn finds most pertinent, and ideally she would go straight to this section and immediately implement what she’s learned, but she must remember that she actually has an assignment to write on this topic). Jake notes down page numbers and paragraphs as she records the information, while he scrolls through a PADD the contents of which he won’t let her see – she has a suspicion that it’s something from the future, but although she knows enough about the politics of temporal relations to know not to ask, it is with a great deal of self-discipline that she restrains herself. Jake, at least, seems to comprehend the difficulty of her position, and is respectfully quiet about whatever it is that he's researching.

“Yes,” he murmurs, suddenly, breaking through the comfortable haze of concentration built up around them. “I think I’ve got it.”

Kathryn looks up from a diagram elucidating the reproductive cycle of the tribble and meets Jake’s eyes. “Got what?”

He skims a few lines of text and then nods again. “Yes. I think I know how we can stop it from causing the—” he catches himself just in time (much to Kathryn’s chagrin) “—problem I’m trying to prevent. But – hmm.” He is staring quizzically and the book he’s reading, and Kathryn frowns.  
“What?”

“We’re going to need a bio-containment field, something more powerful than the low-level security field I generated with my tricorder.” He looks up at her. “Where’s the best place on campus to find something like that?”

Kathryn’s heart flips in her chest; it knows the answer even before her mind does. “The exobiology lab.”

“Great,” Jake says, moving to collect his things and stand. “Let’s go!”

“But,” Kathryn says, raising a hand to stop him, “it can only be accessed with the permission of an instructor.”

“Like Lieutenant Howard?” he asks, and she nods, her mouth twisting.

“Exactly.”

*

They come up with a plan. Kathryn takes Jake out of Academy grounds to discuss it; perhaps she is being overly cautious, but Kathryn doesn’t want to risk anything getting in the way of their mission, not when they’re so close to finally getting somewhere. She grabs a Starfleet-issue carry-bag, slides a couple of their reference PADDs into it, and leads Jake out to the park directly overlooking the Bay. It’s busy on a day like today, bright and warm, and they will not be noticed or suspected here. Nevertheless, Kathryn finds a bench for them part of the way down the hill, a little further from where the majority of cadets and local families are picnicking or playing games.

“How long do you have?” Kathryn asks, once they’re seated and they are certain no one nearby is listening.

“What do you mean?”

She gestures expansively, taking in the Bay in front of them, the cadets around them, the Academy buildings across the road. “How long do you have here, before you have to go back to your time?”

Jake looks down, almost shy. “I guess it’s kinda obvious, huh. That I’m not from around here.”

Kathryn debates for a moment telling him about Benjamin, about why she was able to figure it out so quickly (though the beyond-state-of-the-art technology of Jake’s tricorder would have eventually clued her in too), but she doesn’t want to risk distorting the timeline any more than she needs to. Maybe she’ll tell him later, once they’ve dealt with the tribble situation, but until then she thinks it’s better to be vague.

“I wouldn’t say _obvious_ , not to most of the people around here. It’s just that I’ve seen your technology, and I know that you’re here trying to stop something from occurring, but you have a level of certainty and detail that strongly implies temporal displacement.”

Jake laughs a little, then sighs, and it seems like relief. “I’m actually sort of glad to hear you say it. I was getting tired of watching my tenses. My dad—” and here Kathryn can’t help but look up sharply, though she is fortunate that Jake is looking away when she does, “—I think he’s at the Academy now, but I don’t know what year. I didn’t look, to be honest. Thought I’d get too distracted if I knew I could talk to his old self. See if he got wild before he settled down and had me, heh.” Jake smiles up at her, and Kathryn returns it. After a moment of hesitation, she reaches out to press her hand against his shoulder.

“I'll tell you what,” she says. “What do you say we think about that a little more once we’ve taken care of our current situation?”

He perks up at that. “Sounds good.”

“All right. Our first step will need to be to secure some unsupervised time in the exobiology lab. We should be in luck – there aren’t nearly as many people in need of the labs on the weekend, and we already know that Lieutenant Howard is here. I’ll go to her office and ask her if I can use it for an experiment related to my project. Then comes the slightly more difficult part.”

Jake nods. “We have to get back into that storage room and move the tribble without attracting any attention. And without hurting it,” he adds, and Kathryn presses a hand to her temple.

“Jake,” she says softly, “I know you can’t give me all the details surrounding the appearance of this fluffy menace to humanity—”

“—and Klingons,” Jake supplies with a grin, and Kathryn gives him a withering look, which only makes him grin wider.

“And the Klingons,” she allows. “But could you at least tell me why it’s so important that we protect it all costs? I fail to understand how a rapidly reproducing lifeform that seems to do little but eat and multiple its numbers at increasingly alarming speeds can be so important to something at Starfleet Academy. And you, Jake,” she continues, warming up to her subject; she can feel the frustration of hours and days without explanation bleeding through to the surface, “I know you’re not a Starfleet officer. For one thing, you’re too young, but you don’t even _want_ to be a Starfleet officer, do you?”

Jake eyes have widened a little, his face edged into seriousness, and he shakes his head. “No, I’m not a cadet, and I don’t want to be one. I’m a writer,” he confesses, and Kathryn can’t help lifting an eyebrow in surprise.

“A writer?” she asks. “Then what are you doing here, out of time, on a mission to stop a tribble from reproducing?”

He stops for several long moments, studying her, and then he sighs heavily in defeat. “Oh, alright, I’ll tell you. But I’m not telling you anything else besides what I’m doing here – I don’t know what the rules are for situations like this, but I do know that the less I reveal the better. Okay?”

Kathryn nods. “Okay. You can trust me, Jake; if I can help it, I won’t let anyone else know what’s going on here.”

“Okay,” he says. “First of all, you should know I’m not here deliberately. I didn’t plan it. It’s not like Starfleet picked me to go back in time and stop some weird event from happening when I’m not even trained to deal with it.”

“I suspected as much,” Kathryn says, beckons for him to go on.

“I was in a shuttlecraft with my friend Nog – now, he actually does want to go to the Academy. In fact, he's doing a pre-entrance training course at the moment, and that's why we were here. I came with him for the ride. We did what we had to do here and were just on our way back to the runabout when we got separated - something happened and somehow I ended up back in time. He didn’t.”

“All right,” Kathryn says slowly. “So what’s that got to do with the tribble? How do you even know it’s there?”

“Uh, sort of an accident and sort of not? We sort of ... had one, where we were going, and it—”  
Kathryn has a flash of understanding, suddenly, at why there's a reason the future belongs exactly where it is. “Never mind, I think I get the idea. So if I might extrapolate, there is some sort of causality loop involved in this, yes? Your arrival created the problem, which became a part of history—”

“—a part of history that wasn’t supposed to happen at all,” Jake reminds her.

“—And now you are trying to prevent what has already occurred by being here, accidentally, at the wrong time. Or is it the right time?”

“You see why this kind of gives me a headache,” Jake says.

Kathryn nods, probably more enthusiastically than the topic warrants. “I certainly do. But look at it this way,” she quips, smiling over at him. “It’ll make a great story.”

He grins. “It sure will. The tribble itself is actually not that important. I mean, it doesn’t sing or dance or save the world or anything.”

Kathryn is relieved to hear that and tells him so. Jake nods.

“But if I let it reproduce too much it’s going to cause problems. And if–” he glances up at Kathryn, then, concern suddenly written across his features. “What if I’m doing this all wrong? What if I shouldn’t be trying to change history?”

Kathryn frowns, considering. “I understand your uncertainty,” she tells him honestly, “but didn’t you say that things happened differently to how they were supposed to? You seemed very certain that you needed to stop this from happening when you first came here.”

“Yes, I –” Jake stops, thinks, then nods. “Yes, you’re right, I think I’ve just been thinking about this all too much. Let’s go ahead with the plan. Where should I go while you go ask Lieutenant Howard for permission to use the exobiology lab?”

Kathryn tries her best to ignore the shiver of anticipation that runs down her spine at the thought of going (finally) to the office of the woman who has occupied her off-duty thoughts for too many months – she has avoided it so far, the temptation too much for her to bear, the potential awkwardness of the meeting enough to persist in the preservation of her dignity – and answers the question. “I think you should stay here, or go back to your shuttle. I don’t want to risk putting you in a Starfleet uniform, not when your getting caught could unravel this entire operation and confuse everything even further.”

“Yeah, I think so too. Especially because Lieutenant Howard has seen me, and she would know I’m not supposed to be here if I turned up again around Starfleet equipment.”

Kathryn nods her agreement. “It’s a shame you can’t come with me, since you know so much more about this than I do, but I suppose it’s best not to take the risk.”

“All you need to know is that the tribble needs to stay alive, but you can’t let its reproduction get out of control. I don’t know what would happen if it only reproduced once, but I don’t really want to find out. Just make sure you don’t feed it too much.”

Kathryn nods again.

“Here,” Jake says, and hands her the PADDs he was holding. “I’ve made copies of this stuff, so you take it. It makes a good cover for your research.” He heaves the big book he was carrying into his bag, and Kathryn catches a glimpse of a word in the title: temporal. She ought to have guessed.

“Thanks,” Kathryn says. She looks up at him and smiles, shielding her eyes against the sun. “Be careful, Jake. Go back to the shuttle and keep your communicator with you. I’ll contact you when I’ve made some progress.”

Jake nods. “Good luck, Kathryn.”

Kathryn looks over to the Academy and imagines Beverly Howard behind her desk, in civilian clothes, her long hair loose and spilling over her shoulders, her chair, the countertop in front of her—

She swallows. “I’ll need it.”

***

Beverly’s grandmother has just left her console for a moment to fetch a recipe she simply must pass on – it doesn’t matter that Beverly rarely has the time or opportunity to cook real food, and certainly not when she’s living and working on Starfleet Academy grounds, or that Beverly could surely find a faster way for Nana to transmit the information than reading it out to her over the communication link – when she is startled out of her fond exasperation by a chime at the door. She glances at the chronometer – 1520 on an off-day – and frowns in confusion at who could be calling on her at this time, but supposes it must be one of her colleagues and calls to the computer to admit them.

She turns back to the computer to check that her grandmother hasn’t returned, and then swings her chair around to face the person in her doorway – and stops herself just in time from letting out a gasp of surprise at the sight of Kathryn Janeway standing there, rigid, looking as though she’s trying her damned best not to look uncomfortable, with a tentative smile on her face.

Beverly has been momentarily shocked into speechlessness, so it’s a good thing when Kathryn says, “Hello, Lieutenant Howard. Am I disturbing you? I could come back later if you like—” because it effectively kicks Beverly into gear.

She stands up and gestures for Kathryn to come in, saying, “No, no, it’s all right, I’ll just – Nana,” she says, leaning down to the monitor just as her grandmother returns, “I’ll have to call you back later, okay? One of my students is here.”

“Oh, yes, that’s fine, dear. I’ll give you this recipe then!”

“Bye, Nana. Love you.” The screen clicks off its obscured view of her grandmother’s bright, warm living room in her bright, warm house on Caldos and is replaced with the standard Starfleet Academy logo. She takes a breath (surreptitiously, she hopes) and turns back to the door, where Kathryn is still hovering uncertainly, just inside.

“Sorry about that,” Beverly says, recovering nicely (if she does say so herself), if a little too enthusiastically. “Now, Cadet, what can I do for you?”

Kathryn steps a little further into the room and fidgets for a moment before linking her hands behind her back and standing taller. She looks older when stands like that, Beverly notices; more confident. There is a purpose to her stance that translates to her words. “I’m working on my project for exobiology and I’d like to request permission to use one of the labs to run some experiments.” She pauses. “Today, if that’s at all possible. I know this is short notice, but I’ve just come into contact with some material that will help move my findings forward.” She speaks smoothly, assuredly, with just a touch of rehearsal, though Beverly does not begrudge her that. In fact, she can understand it better than she probably ought, but irrelevant to her own feelings regarding this particular instance, she can identify with the uncertainty of going to a staff member’s door on a day of no classes and encountering them in the middle of a personal communication. She resolves to do her best to push aside her inappropriate feelings and make Kathryn feel as welcome as she can.

“Come in and have a seat,” Beverly says, smiling and waving towards the chair on the opposite side of her desk. She sits back down at her computer console, keys in her password and opens the log for the exobiology labs. “Just a moment and I’ll check the roster for you – from memory no one had booked them out for today, but I’ll just make sure – yes. One of Lieutenant Pulaski’s classes is using the largest of them, but labs Alpha and Delta ought to be free.” She glances up with a smile and notes that Kathryn has dropped her shoulders somewhat; the news that she will be able to immediately continue her research seems to have relaxed her a great deal. Beverly resists the urge to smile more widely (and for different reasons) at the sincerity of her dedication, and instead leans back in her chair and meets her eyes. “You’re free to use it now, if you like. I’ve authorized your comm signature to the identification system. You shouldn’t have any problems getting in there, but let me know if you do and I’ll come to your rescue.”

Oh dear, she thinks belatedly; that sounded awfully flirtatious in retrospect. She is in the process of hoping that Kathryn missed it, that the slip didn’t make her feel uncomfortable, when she notices that Kathryn is glancing down at her twisted hands, trying unsuccessfully to cover the fact that she’s blushing. The tips of her ears are pink, Beverly notices. It’s ... unexpectedly charming.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Kathryn says, when she looks up again, steadier than Beverly feels. Her eyes don’t falter, not for a second, and Beverly finds herself wondering exactly when the dynamics of this situation shifted – when did the tension in the room become so thick, or is that her imagination?

“You’re welcome.” For reasons she will never understand, Beverly leans back in her chair and says, “How is your project coming along? Is Mr Sisko not with you? I thought, when I met you earlier, you two might have been meeting up to work on it together.”

Kathryn looks startled, almost as though she had forgotten that they’d run into each other on the turbolift that day, and then she laughs. Beverly feels the sound peal around her, curl through to her fingertips, and she grips the edge of her chair in instinctive reaction. “Of course,” she says, and then, gesturing vaguely, “I’m sorry, I’ve had quite a long day already. No, Benjamin and I have split our next couple of tasks because our schedules conflict.” She allows Beverly a wry smile that doesn’t at all help to alleviate the tingling. “Frankly, I think he's a little better at the research side of things anyhow. He doesn’t have much patience for lab work, but I enjoy it. I find the quiet, methodological tasks soothing.”

“So do I,” Beverly murmurs, before she can think better of it. “I’ve always appreciated the way medicine balances research and personal interaction.”

“I can understand that,” Kathryn says, and Beverly supposes that she can. She makes a mental note to send a communiqué to Deanna as soon as Kathryn has left the office, because if they have professional mentality in common – ironic, she thinks, without humor – then she may well be doomed.

“What is the topic of your project, if you don’t mind my asking?”

They hadn’t been required to submit an hypothesis proposal; Beverly hadn’t thought it necessary for the kind of skill this assessment required, and besides, when she was marking several dozen second-year exobiology projects, she usually preferred to be surprised.

Kathryn’s face goes blank for a moment, but then she says, with a half-laugh that seems to get caught in her throat, “Actually, we’ve decided to study the reproductive cycle of the tribble.”

“Tribbles?” Beverly exclaims, and she can’t help the laugh of surprise. “Interesting. What an unusual choice. What made you pick tribbles?”

“No particular reason. Variety, really; neither of us knew much about them, but we both knew the story of the infestation aboard the _Enterprise_ under Kirk, so we decided to go with that.” Kathryn catches her eye and offers a smile that’s almost cheeky. “We also thought you might get a little bored of reading about the _Pon Farr_. We heard that’s always a popular choice.”

At that, Beverly can’t help herself; she actually rolls her eyes. “Oh, like you wouldn’t believe – I sometimes think we cadets aren’t taught enough about alien cultures besides the Vulcans and the Klingons. Do you know I’ve only ever had two students attempt a study of the neurobiological specificities that enable Betazoid telepathic abilities? Or even half-human, half-Betazoid _empathic_ abilities? I have a friend—” she stops, wondering if this constitutes a personal revelation and if she is crossing the line of propriety by revealing it, but figures she’s already started and goes on. “—I have a friend, a Starfleet counselor, whose unique skills as a half-Betazoid make for a fascinating window into psychological study.”

Kathryn is listening to this intently, and leans forward slightly in her chair once Beverly has finished. “Yes,” Kathryn says, “a cadet in one of my classes was half-Betazoid, and I always wondered—”

They go on talking, exchanging stories and theories and questions about all manner of points on exobiology, on medicine, even on the advanced warp field theory course Kathryn is taking that Beverly achieved high marks in through sheer force of will and application of medical discipline. They are laughing at the tail-end of one of Kathryn’s stories of barely-averted disaster in her first week of cadet training, when the door chimes again and Beverly glances over at her chronometer—

—only to gasp and realise that it was now well past 1600 hours: they have been talking, chatting like peers – like equals, like friends, Beverly thinks, not as guiltily as she should – for over an hour. She swallows down the laughter that is still bubbling up in her chest and looks seriously over at Kathryn (or tries, at least; Kathryn, for her part, makes a valiant effort at doing the same). She says quietly, “Excuse me a moment,” and Kathryn nods. “Enter!” she calls, to the computer and to the second unlikely person to interrupt her on a weekend.

The door slides open to reveal none other than Benjamin Sisko, and he looks about as surprised as Kathryn does to see her there. He takes a step in and glances between them, then an alarmingly conspiratorial grin spreads over his face.

Beverly narrows her eyes, looking back and forth between them. They don’t look like they’ve spoken a word to one another in days, let alone like they’ve made elaborate plans to divide their workload. She briefly considers the possibility that Kathryn has taken on the bulk of the work herself, that perhaps Benjamin isn’t pulling his weight, but she’s seen them sit together and she’s seen the standard of the work that both of them turn in; there’s no way either of them is lazy or callous with their grades. What is going on here?

“So,” Benjamin starts, clapping his hands together, but before he can continue Kathryn has shot out of her chair, glared daggers at him, and turned back to face Beverly. She smiles, a little forced but mostly genuine.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she says, “I appreciate your help with the access, and thank you for the discussion. I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time.” Then she stands to attention, nods once, and marches straight out the door, literally pushing Benjamin along in front of her. The doors slide shut behind them, but not before she hears his protest, laced with humor but also with questions, floating back down towards her. After they’ve gone, Beverly stays at her desk for several moments, not moving – just trying, not for the first time today, nor the first time since she met and found herself increasingly distracted by Kathryn Janeway, to figure out what on earth is going on.

True to her mental word, she keys her password into her console (it had switched itself into power-save mode during her talk with Kathryn, again) and opens a message to Deanna. Knowing that Deanna will know immediately what she’s talking about, she keeps it short and direct:

_If you’re not too tired after the seminar, let me know if you want to get some dinner. This may be a bigger problem than we thought._

***

Kathryn doesn’t stop pushing Benjamin along in front of her until they round the corner and find themselves in front of the turbolift, which she summons with a great deal of impatience. Only then does she let go, but she turns on him with such a vicious glare that he recoils, albeit laughing. If she weren’t so intent on maintaining her demeanor of irritated disturbance she might have laughed along with him, because sometimes she thinks that the way Benjamin Sisko handles unexpected events or stress is the greatest thing she’s ever seen: ram right into it, grinning all the while. One day he's going to make a brilliant captain, that much she knows without having to question Jake's experience of the future.

“What are you doing?” he is asking her now, brushing down his civilian shirt where she had tugged and pushed it into a crease at the back. He leans forward and waggles his eyebrows. “Was I _interrupting_ something?”

“Be quiet!” she hisses, whipping her head around instinctively to check that they aren’t being overheard. He's laughing again, and she pushes him into the turbolift when it arrives and orders, “Exobiology Lab Delta,” before they set off. “No,” she says to Benjamin, “you were not interrupting anything. I just went to Be—Lieutenant Howard’s office to request the use of a lab for an experiment I want to run, and I—”

He points a finger at her and grins, unabashed at the interruption. “You were going to call her Beverly just then, weren’t you?” It isn’t really a question. Has he no sense of shame? It seems not.

She sighs, admitting temporary defeat in an effort to throw him off course. “Maybe I was, but it doesn’t matter. What’s more important is what were you doing there? I thought you were off to play some antiquated team sport today?”

He spreads his hands, grinning. “Baseball,” he says reverently, and then, “I did. It’s finished.”

Ah. Kathryn hadn’t counted on that. “Did you win?” she asks. She doesn’t know what such a victory would even entail, but it seems like the right sort of question to ask.

Benjamin grins. “Sure did. We’re going up against my arch rival next week.” He face darkens and he steeples his fingers. “We’re going to wipe the floor with him this time, I’m determined.” Then he glances at her and brightens again. “You should come watch!”

“Your baseball match?”

“Game,” Benjamin corrects automatically, then nods. “Yeah! It’ll be fun. You can see what has entertained people all over North America since the twentieth century.” He pauses a moment and then says, wickedly, “You should bring Lieutenant Howard. We can always use more spectators. We don’t get quite as much interest as the Parrises Squares tournaments do.” Benjamin makes an unimpressed noise of frustration, and Kathryn finds herself grinning at the thought of how well Benjamin would get along with her mother: they could talk the merits of traditional versus modern sports until the cows came home.

Her brain, however, is far more preoccupied with what Benjamin has just suggested, and she precedes him out of the turbolift so as to hide her blush. “Very funny,” is all the response she allows, a drawl, as he steps out behind her (laughing; he’s so infuriating that she’d hit him if he hadn’t given her something to think – or dream – about). They walk down the deserted corridor toward Lab Delta and Kathryn asks again, “So why were you there?”

“Ah,” Benjamin says, “I was actually looking for you. I thought you might like to talk a bit about the project if you were around, and the computer told me you were in Lieutenant Howard’s office.”

“Oh, of course,” she says. They’ve reached the lab, and for the first time since the rush of adrenaline-fuelled embarrassment has carried her down here, she feels a twinge of guilt at what she’s keeping from him. Ordinarily, he would be the kind of person she wouldn’t hesitate to include in such information – he is quick, clever, sensible and unafraid to do what he believes is right. She has no doubt he could help, but she knows she can’t risk he and Jake meeting, can’t risk what would happen if Benjamin figured out what had happened or if Jake inadvertently let something slip. Dubious knowledge of temporal mechanics aside, Kathryn does know that life-changing events (including children) are not supposed to be known about before their remote conception. Kathryn has inferred through Jake’s comments, through his subtle ways of speaking about his father, that his mother died when he was younger, and that is yet another thing that Kathryn can risk Benjamin finding out.

She sighs, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. When did Academy life get so damned complicated? She turns to look at him, serious now, and says, “I’m sorry for not coming to you before I went to talk to Beverly,” she says, and doesn’t even bother to correct the familiarity in her head. “I guess I got a little bit overenthusiastic about the idea of using the lab.”

“Why are we using the lab?” he asks, as she presses her hand to the access code and the computer scans her comm signature and admits her. Benjamin follows and the computer allows him to; she supposes Beverly must have granted him access as well. They enter the pristine space of the lab, cool and soothing in its muted grey tones, and Kathryn takes a breath of sterile air. It might not be everyone’s idea of paradise, but it's hers. A quiet place to commune with science – what more could she want?

She turns around to smile at Benjamin, to share this thought with him, but is stopped short by the sight of him standing static in the doorway, a look as close to horror as she’s ever seen plastered on his face. “Uh, Kathryn,” he murmurs, gesturing to the side of the room. “Did you know about this?”

And Kathryn turns to see a pile – a group? A swarm? A collective? – of tribbles scattered on the floor of the lab, directly beneath – she goes cold when she sees it – the _air-vent_. How did this happen? The last she’d heard the tribble was safely encased and under control. How did it multiply when Jake had only been feeding the one he had in the security field?

Her mind burning with questions she forces herself to push away, she takes a breath and decides to improvise. “Yes,” she says, and hopes Benjamin is distracted enough not to question it. “I did, that was why I wanted to use the lab.” Well, it’s partially true. “There weren’t so many of them, though – I can’t work out how they’ve been breeding, not when I haven’t been feeding them too much – oh.” She spies a container, overturned and half-shattered, that had possibly contained some form of grain in its previous life. She spares a moment to hope that that isn’t the remnants of someone’s science project and then looks over at Benjamin. “Well, I think we’ve solved that mystery.” _Though not the one of how they got there in the first place_ , her helpful mind adds.

He nods, stepping closer, and they stand side-by-side and stare at the tribbles. With any luck, Kathryn thinks, he won’t ask her _how_ they got there in the first place. The next words out of his mouth are, “How did they get here in the first place?” and Kathryn sighs inwardly. She should have known.

She settles for evasion. “I have a few theories, but I think at the moment our more pressing concern is making sure that we get them secured and cleaned up so that we can keep the breeding to a minimum.” She grimaces. “We’ve both read the diagrams – we’ll be lucky if we’re only in for another couple of litters.”

“Agreed,” Benjamin says, and he moves to start collecting the tribbles from where they lie strewn, twitching and purring, across the floor.

“And whatever you do,” Kathryn says, as she walks to the centre of the lab to activate the bio-containment field that will hopefully make their problem a little easier to solve, “don’t let them eat anything else.”

***

It takes half an hour, but they manage to tidy and recycle the spilled and broken contents of the containers that toppled when, as far as they can tell, the tribbles fell from the air vents and onto the workbench directly beneath it. They log the accident into the lab computer, detailing what was destroyed, but by the time they’ve straightened the cupboards they are satisfied that the contents were merely everyday supplies rather than some other student’s lab experiment. When they’re done, the tribbles are safely contained with a secure bio-field, and the two of them step back to admire their work.

Benjamin huffs out a breath, satisfied. “Do you think we should put up a sign saying ‘Do Not Feed the Tribbles’?” he asks, and Kathryn laughs aloud, relieved at the lightened mood.

“Maybe we should,” she jokes back, but she doesn’t really think it’s necessary; the field is tucked away safely in the corner of the lab, marked as the project of Cadets Janeway and Sisko under Beverly Howard, in a restricted access area of the science block. If this isn’t secure, she doesn’t know what is. They cast a final glance around the room, sweeping for rogue balls of fur, and then make their way to the door to leave when they’re convinced they’ve swept the area completely. Kathryn keys them both out of the lab, checks that it’s locked behind her, and then turns around to head back to the turbolift – only to come face to face with Jake Sisko.

*

She would be looking daggers at him, but she’s too stunned to unfreeze her face from its instinctive horror. What is he doing? He was supposed to wait for her outside, far away, preferably hidden inside his shuttle, somewhere deep in a forest. This was not part of the plan. She attempts to convey all this to him with her eyebrows before she steps back and smiles up at Benjamin, hoping desperately that it doesn’t look as manic and forced as it feels.

“Benjamin,” she says pointedly, “this is my friend - James.” Captain Kirk’s dilemma with the tribbles is the closest thing on her mind, and at least it rolls smoothly off her tongue.  
Jake looks over at her with a grin that makes her irritation falter for just a moment; he knows exactly what’s going on here, and his delight at being allowed to interact with an earlier, pre-marriage, pre-children version of his father is something she couldn’t begrudge anyone. He turns back to Benjamin, sticks out a hand and says, “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

Benjamin looks a little surprised, possibly because Jake is obviously too young to be at Starfleet Academy, but he smiles and shakes his hand with his usual friendliness. “You too,” he says. “You, ah, like to hang around exobiology labs in your spare time?”

“Heh,” Jake laughs, “no, I was just looking for Kathryn. She’s been—” he glances over to her, “helping me out with school work. I’m not so good at calculus, but I need it if I want to come to Starfleet Academy after I graduate.”

Kathryn beckons them forward and the three of them walk towards the turbolift together; Kathryn tries not to think about just how bizarre it is to be walking down a corridor in Starfleet Academy with her friend and his unbeknownst sixteen-year-old son who has yet to be born, because the whole thing is starting to give her a headache already. Still, she can’t help smiling at the way Jake is trying to contain his excitement at meeting Benjamin, and she’s grateful that Benjamin is engaging him in conversation the way he is, joking around and generally demonstrating his good-naturedness.

But as much as she’d love to let them spend the rest of the evening chatting, Jake asking as many questions as he can without giving away his particular interest in Benjamin’s life, Kathryn knows that she needs to separate them quickly so she can find out how and why Jake showed up to the lab in the first place.

By the time they’ve left the turbolift and walked outside into the grounds, the sun is waning in the sky and starting to streak rich colours over the Bay. She slips a hand around Jake’s arm and says, “Well, Benjamin, I’d better get James started on some calculus work before it gets dark. Thank you for your help earlier, I appreciate it. I’ll comm you so we can arrange when to meet up next, okay?”

“Sounds good,” Benjamin says, “and you’re welcome.” He turns to Jake, extends his hand again. “It was nice to meet you – maybe I’ll see you around the Academy sometime.”

Jake grins. “I hope so. See you.”

Benjamin gives him a mock-salute, tosses Kathryn a smile, and then turns around to walk off in the opposite direction. Jake watches him go, his eyes suspiciously misty, and Kathryn squeezes his arm where she’s still holding it. “Hey,” she murmurs, “you all right?”

Jake shakes his head, clears the emotion from his eyes and grins at her. “Yeah. How cool was that? I just got to meet my dad before he even knew me!”

She grins back. “When you get home, and all this is done, you’ll have to tell him.”

Jake glances back one more time and then turns away. “I think I will.”

“Now,” Kathryn says, “about that tribble...”

*

They take the long route back to the storage cabinet just to be safe; after the run-in with Benjamin, harmless though it turned out to be, Kathryn doesn’t want to risk running into Beverly or anyone else who might question either Jake’s presence or their activities.

The corridor is nearly empty when they reach it, but they keep their eyes on both entrances to make sure it’s clear before they let themselves in, Jake jumpy and Kathryn tense. “Come on,” she murmurs, as he takes out his futuristic tricorder (that she still hasn’t gotten past her disappointment at not being allowed to see) and keys in the code to unlock the door. “We haven’t got much time, and we need to figure out exactly what we’re up against.”

Jake turns to her. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she says, and nods at him to slide the door open.

After that, she doesn’t speak for long, long minutes. Neither does Jake. They just stand there, side-by-side in the doorway, staring at what used to be the floor but what now appears more like a lumpy, fluffy carpet.

Then: “I have two questions,” she says, deliberately, once they have determined that they are not engaged in some form of shared hallucination. “One: why did we not destroy these when they first began to replicate?”

Jake sighs, seems to accept that this situation has reached the point of no return, and finally tells her, “It was for a science project.”

Kathryn stares. “ _Whose_ science project? I thought we’d established that you aren’t at Starfleet Academy?”

“My friend Nog,” Jake admits. “We were in a shuttle on our way back from collecting it when I got thrown back in time and landed here. And I think the tribble had something to do with it.”

“With your ... being thrown back in time,” Kathryn says slowly. “Just to be clear.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you couldn’t destroy it,” she continues, “because it may have been instrumental in bringing you here?”

Jake nods. “And ‘cause Nog was supposed to do an experiment on it for part of his pre-Academy entrance course. I didn’t want to mess it up for him by killing his subject.”

Kathryn offers him a smile at that; it feels a little strained on her face, but she does find his consideration endearing, if also exasperating. “Right then,” she says, clapping her hands together and turning back to the tribble-lined floor before them. “What we need to do now, Jake, is figure out how to proceed. Do you think you’ll be able to find the original tribble in this—” she gestures expansively around them, “—mess?”

Jake grimaces, but starts to pick his way through the – herd? swarm? – nonetheless. “I should; I marked the original one, and it can’t have moved far from the case I put it in – here.” He has reached what used to be the containment field, and Kathryn watches dubiously as he rummages through the piles of chirping furballs, peering at each closely before he discards them. Then finally he holds one up in triumph and cries, “Yes! I’ve got it! And it’s still alive.” He lets out a relieved breath of air and threads his way back through to where she’s standing. “So what do we do now?”

“Now,” she says, “we find every last one of these creatures, even if it means crawling through the air-vents ourselves or manipulating the transporter on your shuttle to get them, and then we find a way to get rid of them. Inconspicuously. Because they certainly can’t stay here, and I don’t see a way of involving anyone else in this that wouldn’t end in total disaster.”

“Because we couldn’t risk contaminating the timeline,” Jake nods. Then a cool voice behind them says, “And why is that?” and Kathryn goes cold, because that it is a voice she could place anywhere, anytime; that is a voice that has wound its lilting way into her thoughts and her dreams for longer than she would care to admit.

“Beverly,” she blurts, before she can think to correct herself, and, mortified, she feels her cheeks color and her throat constrict as all reasonable expression escapes her.

Beverly is standing at the entrance of the storage closet, hands on her hips, piercing eyes locked on Kathryn’s, and there is a tense, drawn silence from all three of them before Jake steps up beside her and – bless him – tries to cover.

“Hi, Lieutenant Howard. Kathryn and I were just having a, a theoretical—”

“Hypothetical—“

“Yes—discussion about—”

Beverly cuts them off with a pointed glance around the room and a wave of her hand. “How about we skip the ‘hypothetical’ and get straight to the point? I think it’s quite clear we’re dealing with reality, so I’ll ask again: what is going on here?” She gazes at Kathryn, her eyes challenging but also concerned, somehow open, and says, “Talk.” So Kathryn does.

***

“How did you know to look for us here?” Kathryn asks, a little while later; she seems to have forgotten herself out of genuine curiosity, so Beverly is willing to let it slide.

“Something felt off when you introduced me to ... Jake, here,” – Kathryn at least has the grace to look embarrassed at being caught out – “—so I had a look at Benjamin Sisko’s Starfleet personnel file.”

Kathryn pales, and Beverly finds herself inexplicably stifling a laugh. She reaches over to pat Kathryn’s hand. “Don’t worry, Cadet. I’m sure it would have gone down fine had you been talking to anyone else; I just happened to have had a conversation with Cadet Sisko recently about his family, and he mentioned that he was the youngest of his brothers. It took me a few days to reconcile that information with what you told me, but once I did I realized something was off.”

Kathryn is glancing down at her hands as she takes this in, but she looks up once Beverly has finished, her expression troubled, her eyes sincere. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. It wasn’t my wish to intentionally deceive you, I just didn’t want to risk involving anyone else in this mess on the chance that it might further—”

“I know,” Beverly interrupts gently, “and we’ll discuss it more later, but right now we need to focus on the problem at hand. I need you to forget about all that for now and make yourself as sharp and determined as usual, understood, or am I going to have to order you?” The stern words are belied by her smile, she can feel it, but it’s worth it to see the way Kathryn’s brow smooths over, her mouth softens, and her features realign themselves into focus.

She says, “No, ma’am, I understand,” with her chin tilted up and her eyes bright and steady on Beverly’s.

Beverly wants to reach over and squeeze her shoulder, a sign of support, a sign of affection, a sign of something she shouldn’t name (at least not right now), but she doesn’t. She curls her fingers into her palm and thinks, _Wait_. She thinks, _Later_. She thinks, _Soon. Once all this over._

 _Soon_.

***

Beverly leaves them in her office, this time, with strict instructions to Kathryn to not let anyone in on what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. “In the unlikely event that someone should come by to see me, tell them I’m running an errand.”

“What kind of errand?” Jake asks, but closes his mouth when he catches Beverly’s look.

Kathryn feels mildly insulted that Beverly should feel the need to warn her against involving anyone else – it was her own plan, after all, and it would have worked out perfectly well had Beverly not been so attentive or intelligent or well able her to read her bluffs – but she nods and says, “Yes, ma’am,” anyway. Beverly pauses in the doorway, watching her, as though there’s something she wants to say, but she merely shakes her head and strides out, the office door closing behind her.

Beverly doesn’t tell her where she’s really going, so Kathryn doesn’t ask, and she smothers down the sense of disappointment she has no right to feel that Beverly isn’t confiding in her. She feels ridiculous as soon as the thought has registered – why _should_ she confide in her? Kathryn is her student, a student who is single-handedly responsible for allowing a civilian access to Academy grounds, for failing to stop or report an infestation of alien creatures on the same Academy grounds (however harmless said alien creatures may be), and for actively lying to her instructor about the identity of the civilian and the fact that his mere presence may have resulted in irreparable damage to the timeline.

When she puts it like that, she’ll be lucky to still have a career at the end of this fiasco. And they haven’t even worked out what to do with the tribbles yet. She groans, loudly, and rests her head in her hands over the PADD that has momentarily lost her concentration.

She feels Jake’s eyes on her, then his hand, hesitant as it rests on her arm. “Kathryn? Are you okay?”

She thinks about telling him, but she knows it won’t be productive, so she just smiles with what she hopes is more confidence than she feels and says, “I’m fine. Let’s get to work. There’s got to be something here that can help us – we just have to find it and put it in action before we all get in trouble.”

***

Beverly has never been so thankful to have somebody owe her a favor. She walks quickly from the turbolift to the door, hoping desperately that its occupant isn’t engaged, and announces her presence.

She hears the person inside it say, “Enter,” sighs in relief, and does.

***

_The tribble is native to the sand caves of Iota Geminorum IV, though it has been known to thrive in a vast array of conditions, including those deadly to other creatures on the planet. Tribbles are known for their immense reproductive capacity as well as their ability to survive on very little nutrition. Due to their commonplace status and their lack of particular utility, the life cycle and biology of the tribble were not studied in detail until the end of the 24th century, when a small group of unidentified scientists hoping to prevent their extermination sought to prove that they possessed a productive purpose._

*

“Have you found anything?” Jake asks.

Kathryn scrolls to the end of another file that has proved unhelpful and sets it aside with a sigh. “Not yet,” she says. “Keep looking. We’ll get there.”

*

_Despite being hunted almost to extinction by Klingon forces, a discovery in the 2300s demonstrated that the purring motion of these creatures, when grouped in large numbers, could generate an electric field capable of stimulating dying crops on the ecologically troublesome Iota Geminorum II and III. Although their status as vermin on their native planet has not been altered, tribbles remain an invaluable aid to farming on these densely-populated neighbouring worlds. This is the only system documented as having benefited from the effects of the tribbles’ hum, as the electric effect is thought peculiar to the atmospheric conditions of Germinora._

*

“A shuttle.”

“Yes,” Beverly says firmly. “A shuttle. Preferably immediately.” She stands taller. “If that is at all possible.”

“It is.” Katherine Pulaski leans back in her chair, studying Beverly with undisguised interest. “You’re on a time limit,” she says, and it isn’t a question.

Beverly has to restrain herself from tapping her foot and snapping that yes, she is, and it would be wonderful if she could just be granted access to it and get on going right now. Fortunately she manages it; she may have a temper, but she also knows how to deal with Pulaski, and she knows that showing the smallest sign of impatience at a moment like this will entirely jeopardize her chances of success. She cannot have Pulaski think that she is impulsive or emotionally overinvested in whatever she’s doing, and this moment, right here, is the one that will determine how many questions come next. She stays still, her eyes unwavering and her head high.

Pulaski watches her for seconds that stretch impossibly on and on, watches her until Beverly wants to scream just to break the intensity, and then she says, “Yes. Permission granted.” She pulls a PADD from a stack on her desk and taps a sequence of keys, then hands it over. It is an official authorization, signed Lieutenant Katherine Pulaski, Official Starfleet Medical Liaison to Transportation. Beverly notices that her own name isn’t mentioned anywhere, and sends silent blessings over the woman’s head.

“The _USS Turing_ has just completed repairs but has yet to be logged back in to the Academy shipyard manifest. Be back within 48 hours and it will stay that way.”

Beverly nods, clutches the PADD to her side as she stands to attention; her rank does not strictly demand it, given that they have the same one, but Pulaski’s responsibilities put her in a higher position, at least enough that Beverly will show it respect. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I won’t let you down.”

“I know, or I wouldn’t have given you access.” She’s giving Beverly a look that is almost a smile, and Beverly works to stop herself from smiling back. Instead she nods and starts to walk away, but Pulaski’s voice stops her. “Lieutenant Howard.”

She turns, brow raised in query.

“Good luck. And – be careful, wherever you’re going.”

Beverly bites her tongue before she can tell her that she doesn’t know where she’s going yet, that she has no idea what she’s doing and her current plan consists of coming up with another plan, and says instead, “Thank you. I will.”

She has just stepped into the corridor and felt the door whoosh shut behind her when her communicator chirps and Kathryn, breathless from excitement, tells her, “We’ve got it!”

***

Kathryn imagines what her report about this incident would look like, should she be required to write one:

 _Following Lieutenant Howard’s procurement of the_ USS Turing, _she and Mr Sisko (civilian, unconceived citizen of the future) proceeded to utilise the shuttle’s transporter to identify and remove the tribbles from the most potentially conspicuous places inside Academy grounds. In order to diminish the possibility of other students discovering the creatures, the air vents were cleared first, followed by the storage room where the original tribble was kept. Fortunately, the rate of replication was slowed due to lack of available food. Lieutenant Howard suggested we convert the cargo hold of the shuttle into a temporary stasis chamber in order to halt their reproduction until we reached our destination, whereupon we remained in high orbit and projected a false warp signature to protect our identities as Starfleet officers. Mr Sisko utilised second-hand engineering experience and a toolkit from the future to assist in this transformation._

Kathryn snorts.

***

They are almost out of the atmosphere when there is a chime on the conn and Beverly, horrified, glances down to see a communication from the Starfleet Academy shipyard coming in. She looks over at Kathryn, mouth set in a thin line, and takes a calming breath before answering, reminding herself that she has authorization, that she is not technically doing anything wrong.

“ _Turing_ here.”

“ _USS Turing_ , this is Ensign Telan at Starfleet Academy shipyard—” Beverly holds her breath. “—Please confirm your flight authorization.”

Beverly’s grin splits her face and she reaches out blindly to grasp Kathryn’s hand; when she looks over, Kathryn is grinning back at her. “Shipyard, this is the _USS Turing_. Authorization Delta-Omega-6, Lieutenant Katherine Pulaski.”

A moment of silence, then the voice crackles over the line. “Authorization confirmed. Have a safe flight.”

“Thank you, Ensign. _Turing_ out.”

***

21 hours later, cargo hold once again free of purring balls of fur, Kathryn, Jake and Beverly leave orbit of Iota Geminorum II and let out a collective sigh of relief, then head as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.

***

_Dear Kathryn,_

_The Starfleet officer I was flying with told me not to tell you anything, but you helped me enough that I figured you deserved the explanation once I got it. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve broken into your quarters to leave you this – I was going to give it to Cadet Shelby but she wasn’t here when I buzzed, and I haven’t got much time._

_I’ve never been too good at engineering, let alone temporal mechanics, but as far as I can understand, I got thrown back in time when a tachyon surge somewhere on the Academy grounds interacted with the electric field the tribble generated when I tried to activate the transporter. I don’t get it either. I think they found me by tracing the transporter log. No one knows why I got sent back to the time I did, but I’m glad I did. I’m glad I met you, and I’m glad you let me meet my dad when he was young. I’ll never forget it._

_I’ve gotta go back now before Nog figures out where I’ve gone and all hell breaks loose (you’ll know why about ten years from now), but before I go I want to say thanks, and I’m really sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye. You really helped me out when you didn’t need to, when I could have gotten you in a whole heap of trouble, and I appreciate that more than I can say. I hope one day I can meet you again and say thank you in person – in fact, when I get back, I’m going to look you up and send you a communiqué. I wonder if you’ll remember after all that time?_

_My dad was lucky to know you back then, and so was I. I’ll never forget you._

_P.S. You should take Lieutenant Howard out for a ~~raktajino~~ cup of coffee one day. I think she’d like it._

_Yours,_

_Jake._

***

Kathryn stands outside the door, fortifying herself with a large, long, slow breath of air, and raises her hand to the buzzer.

“Come in,” she hears Beverly say, and as the door slides open in front of her she takes a moment to straighten her spine, to toss her wayward bangs from her eyes. Then she steps forward and stands at attention, her hands wrung tightly together behind her back.

“Am I disturbing you?”

Beverly looks up from her desk and catches her gaze, holds it just a moment too long before she smiles and says, “No, not at all. Please sit down.”

Kathryn smiles back, hesitantly, takes a step closer to the desk but doesn’t sit. She takes a deep breath in an effort to squash down the fluttering of her stomach and tries to stand straighter. “I just wanted to apologize for the trouble I caused you with my—” she fumbles for an appropriate word, “—situation. I also wanted to thank you, again, for your help ... and for your discretion.” Kathryn wants to say, _Thank you for not placing a formal reprimand in my file_ , but can’t quite fit the words together in a way that feels right. “Of course I would have preferred for the entire thing not to have taken place at all, but since it did, I’m – I’m grateful that you were the one to find out.” She looks down at her feet then, mortified by the traitorous blush she can feel on her cheeks. She wills it away, hoping fiercely that Beverly can’t see it, hoping that her words won’t come across as inappropriate. She fights to keep herself under control, to keep the conversation professional.

When she looks up, Beverly seems to be on the verge of a reply, but something propels Kathryn to interrupt before she can hear it. “Benjamin and I received our grades for the Exobiology project this morning,” she tells her, even though she’s well aware that Beverly already knows. “He was pleased.”

If she is fazed by Kathryn’s sudden inclination to the monologue, Beverly doesn’t let it show. “Well, he deserves it.” She crosses her arms on the table in front of her. “Benjamin’s section of the report was very well-researched and well-expressed. He may not want to admit it, but he has a knack for writing reports.”

Kathryn nods but says nothing further, and Beverly watches her with slightly narrowed eyes. She’s probably wondering where this is going, and Kathryn can’t blame her; what is it about this woman’s presence that has her consistently regressing to the social grace of a teenager? She is summoning the nerve to say something, anything to break the pulsing tension thick in the air between them, when Beverly asks her, “Are you?”

“Am I what, I’m sorry?”

“Are you pleased? With your results?”

“Yes, yes, I was,” Kathryn says. “I am. Thank you.” She shakes her head, forces herself to hold her gaze on Beverly’s as she says what she’s come here to say. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. When I was reading through the comments on my submission, I got the impression that you might not have been the one to write them. In fact, I got the impression that you hadn’t been the one to mark it at all.” She glances away, then, over to the holoimages set up on the cabinet just behind Beverly’s desk. She’s a little too far away to make them out, but it seems like they might be pictures of family. “I may well be mistaken,” she continues, “and I don’t suppose it matters, but I just wanted to ask you myself. Out of interest.”

Beverly nods, thoughtfully, and then she says, “You’re right, of course. I didn’t mark your project, or write the comments.”

Kathryn blinks. She hadn’t expected it to be that easy. She couldn’t say why, but it doesn’t stop from blurting out, “Then who did?”

Beverly smiles, then – unexpectedly – lifts herself gracefully from the chair and walks around to lean against her desk, facing Kathryn head-on from less than two feet away. The space is infinitely smaller without the smooth grey metal of the desk acting as partition, and Kathryn swallows, reminds herself to hold her ground, that this is her tutor ( _was_ her tutor, her mind interjects unhelpfully), and that she is standing in her office. In Starfleet Headquarters. “I had one of my colleagues grade your project for me, because I—” and here Beverly hesitates, almost shy in a way that Kathryn hasn’t seen before, never so closely. “—I felt that, under the circumstances, it would be disadvantageous to both of us for me to mark your work when my objectivity was obviously compromised.”

Kathryn’s heart-rate has doubled in pace since the beginning of this speech, and she curls her fingers into a fist to prevent herself from – she doesn’t know what, but she doesn’t think she wants to find out, not yet. Instead, she clears her throat, tight and dry, and asks, “And why was that?”

“Well, partly because I was personally involved in the development of major aspects of your analysis. But it was mostly because I knew too damned much about what you were doing, and once I found out that you were dealing with the unborn future child of your lab partner, I couldn’t very well turn a blind eye when I marked said lab partner’s project, could I?”

Ignoring the not insignificant question of how Beverly figured out who Jake really was when Kathryn most certainly didn’t tell her, she asks, “So you didn’t mark Benjamin’s section either?”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to create inconsistency by marking one half but not the other, and frankly, after our little adventure, I didn’t want to even read the word tribble. I doubt I will again for the next twenty or thirty years.”

Kathryn can’t help it; she grins at that. “I understand.”

Beverly stares at her for a moment and then grins back. “I’m sure you do.” The grin is stunning, light and bright like the rest of Beverly’s face, like her voice, and Kathryn is momentarily dazzled into speechlessness. When she recovers, she’s realizes she’s been staring, realizes that Beverly has probably noticed, and decides to throw it in for all she’s worth. She’s come this far.

“If it’s not out of line for me to ask, Lieutenant – what was the reason you gave your colleague for not grading our project?”

Beverly cocks her head and pushes herself off the desk so she is standing, somehow closer than she’s ever been before, despite the distance. Her eyes don’t leave Kathryn’s as she murmurs, “I told her that you and I had something of a ... personal involvement, and that it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to—”

“And what made you say that?” Kathryn can’t believe she just interrupted her superior, but this stopped feeling like the interaction of a student and her teacher long ago, certainly long before Kathryn walked into this room to have this particular conversation. She knows she can’t have been imagining it, not with the way that Beverly’s looking at her, bright and fierce with a challenge of something vulnerable that speaks volumes to her sincerity.

“What was it?” Kathryn asks the question softly, and she steps forward, once then twice, until she is standing only inches away from Beverly, eyes locked on hers. Beverly is taller, what with those legs that go on for days, but Kathryn can almost equal it when she has drawn herself up, when’s she curled her spine and lifted her chin the way she’s doing now. Her hands are itching to reach over and touch her, her fingers itching to raise and comb themselves through Beverly’s hair, but she’s going to wait. She’s going to wait until she’s certain.

“Like I said—” and Beverly sways forward a little, runs her eyes over Kathryn’s face as though she’s memorizing every feature in case it suddenly disappears, and she closes her fingers gently around Kathryn’s forearm, “—I told her there was something between us.” She leans in closer and her breath brushes Kathryn’s cheek, erupting gooseflesh over her arms and her neck and oh, Kathryn knows that she won’t be able to hold out much longer. Then Beverly glances up at her through her eyelashes and murmurs, “Was I right?”

And Kathryn smiles the smile she’s been holding back for what feels like days and says, “Oh yes, you were right,” and she finally, desperately, grabs her waist and pulls her into a kiss.

*

It’s not until three weeks later, when Beverly finally has a day free that she can use to tidy the multiple stacks of PADDs that litter her office, when she comes across a text she doesn’t recognize. She scans a few lines of it and then motions to her companion to join her. “Kathryn, come look at this.”

Kathryn, head bent into a large storage drawer at the bottom of Beverly’s filing cabinet, narrowly avoids bumping her head as she extricates herself and crawls over. “What is it?” She reads over Beverly’s shoulder, chin pressed against her hair, and Beverly points to a line of text that Kathryn reads, then reads again, then reads a third time just to make sure she’s read it correctly. Then she slides away so she can look Beverly in the eye.

“Beverly, when was this written?”

Beverly blinks at her. “... Four years from now. How—” she stops, and Kathryn can fairly see the wheels turning in her head. “Could it be – it was meant to happen? The way it did?”

Kathryn stares at her. “You mean Jake was predestined to accidentally come back? To lose the tribble, to meet me, to find the solution to the problem in time to get the tribbles back to Iota Geminorum?”

“Yes,” Beverly says, “otherwise how can we explain this? Look at this paragraph – it says here, ‘a small group of identified scientists’ – that’s exactly what we said when we sent the communiqué to the planet. That was exactly our intention when we had Jake alter the warp signature of the shuttle. We created the past by accidentally using the future of the present.”

Kathryn can feel her face contort at that. “Hold on.”

“You see, it’s a paradox! It’s causality! I just can’t figure out how it happened ... it must have been that Jake used information from the future to influence our actions in the present, which was really the past.”

“For him, but not for us.”

Beverly looks at her thoughtfully. “No.”

“But you really think that it was all supposed to happen the way it did?”

“Well, we’re still here, aren’t we? Everything’s the same.”

Kathryn quirks an eyebrow at her, slow and deliberate. “Not everything.”

Beverly smirks, and the sight of it sends a delicious thrill up Kathryn’s spine and tingles her fingers. “But things seem to be as they should be,” she continues, tapping the PADD. “This text existed before we did what we did, so something must have gone right.”

Kathryn watches her for a long moment, and then she nods. “A paradox?”

“A paradox, a lovely little paradox. But not just a regular one, a paradox of—” she gestures. “Predestination.”

“They ought to have a name for that,” Kathryn says.

Beverly shrugs. “I’m sure they’ll come up with one, someday.”

“Well, if they do, I don’t want to know about it.” Kathryn grins as she returns to the cabinet to finish off her sorting. “Temporal mechanics gives me a headache.”


End file.
